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Sunday, September 16, 2012

OPI Danke-Shiny Red is beautiful both in the bottle and on the nail, and it has a gorgeous glow. It is very similar to A England Perceval and also to a discount drugstore polish I have. It may be a little warmer than Perceval.

In the pictures below, I have a base coat, two coats of Danke-Shiny Red, a coat of Seche Vite, and in some pictures an extra coat or two of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat (I add a coat almost every day so that the manicure lasts longer without chipping).

The polish was opaque at one coat, but you definitely need two coats to get the depth effect of the polish and to get to the bottle color. The polish dried quickly. This polish has the OPI pro-wide brush, and it's easy to use.

It has a metallic shimmer finish, and it's just a little brushstrokey.

Cleanup did take a while. Clean up takes me a while with red polish or black polish. Removal was easy, but I did get some staining on my nails.

I didn't have any shrinkage from either Seche Vite or the Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat. I did have some tip wear.

This is from OPI's Germany collection for fall, but it's a perfect color for Christmas.

At the end of this month, I will have been blogging for six months! To celebrate that and also to celebrate having over 50 Facebook likes, I'm giving away seven indie mini polishes. They are: Glitter Gal Green Holo, Amy's Nail Boutique Liberty, Lush Lacquer Snap Crackle Pop, Lush Lacquer Salt n Peppa, SoFlaJo Open All Night, SoFlaJo Pendragon, and a Sally Girl mini. Glitter Gal Green and SoFlaJo Open All Night are good for Halloween. Open All Night glows in the dark. Pendragon and the Sally Girl mini are good fall colors. The Sally Girl mini is a shimmery brown similar to NOPI I'm with Brad and OPI Germanicure. Salt n Peppa is in the same family as Lynnderella's Connect the Dots. Liberty and Snap Crackle Pop are good top coats for patriotic polishes in the U.S. and other countries with red, white and blue flag colors. Here are some pictures:

Indoors

Indoors

Indoors with flash

To enter the giveaway, please complete one or more of the entries possible through Rafflecopter below. You don't have to be a GFC follower or a Facebook liker to enter. If you were a GFC follower or a Facebook liker before today, you have opportunities for extra entries through Rafflecopter. If you are a new Facebook like from today on, you can have an extra entry, and if you were already a Facebook like, you can have that extra entry, too.

EDIT: Yes, it's open INTERNATIONALLY! For the full terms and conditions, please click on the terms and conditions link in the Rafflecopter widget.

Please give the Rafflecopter widget some time to load on your screen. Good luck!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

I didn't want to take off my Teal with It nail polish strips (reviewed here), even though I had messed them up by using Orly Smudge Fixer on them. They still looked pretty from far away. So, I topped the strips with SoFlaJo's Blue Martini, a glitter top coat that I reviewed here. Definitely click through to see how pretty it looks over a black creme. I love the shimmer in it, and I love the holo and the blue glitter and the diamond glitter! There is short bar glitter in Blue Martini, and although I usually don't like large bar glitter, I did like the short bar glitter in Blue Martini.

The Teal with It strips had quite a bit of wear before I topped them with Blue Martini, so you'll see lots of wear in the pictures, especially where I may have tried to clean up around my cuticles only to remove the polish from Teal with It which then seemed to reveal sticker backing. In the pictures below, I added a coat of Gelous and then a coat of Seche Vite, and the mani was very smooth, and you couldn't feel the glitter. The strips lasted the full week that I usually take to redo my manis.

Sunlight.
You can see the shimmer from Teal with It combined with the very similar colored shimmer from Blue Martini.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Sally Hansen Salon Effects in the Teal with It shade are my favorite nail strips. The day of the office holiday party last year, I told my husband that I had read about Salon Effects nail stickers online, and I wanted to try them. While I was getting ready for the party, he went out and bought me the Teal with It nail strips and surprised me with them at home. That was the first time I wore blue nail polish. The strips were and are gorgeous and always get me compliments on my mani. The color is very attention-grabbing, even from far away. It's quite a bright blue.

Unfortunately, I was not able to capture the color in photographs, and I didn't see any pictures online that showed the color accurately. The color is more like turquoise in real life, and it has a greenish teal shimmer, and it looks metallic, but without any of the pesky brush strokes that I get so often with liquid metallic polishes.

This mani did take me a long time. I took 90 minutes, and I only had one perfect nail this time, my right pinky. All my edges were covered, though. I did have to use little slivers of strips here and there to patch up any parts that the strip didn't cover right away.

Even though these Salon Effects manis take me a long time (and I'm including the prep time in there), my sister-in-law just whips them on in 15 minutes. And, you can't beat not having to do any cleanup and not having any stains with gorgeous blue nail polish.

Last year I bought Orly Smudge Fixer because I read online that if the nail polish strips dried out, you could revive them by brushing Orly Smudge Fixer on them after placing them on your nails. Orly Smudge Fixer has a thinner-like effect. In the past, I have used Smudge Fixer to smooth over a seam where I have added a sliver of strip to patch up an empty spot. I had read it was good for smoothing out the wrinkles in the polish strips, but DON'T DO IT!!! It removed the polish quite a bit and let the sticker backing show through a little in a spotted effect. Instead of wearing away the color, I would have rather just worn the strips wrinkled. From far away the polish strips still looked nice, though.

I use top coat on my nail strips to help them last. I added one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat to the Teal with It strips.

I only use the Teal with It strips when my nails are short because then I can cut each strip in half and use it for two nails. I am hoarding my last few strips of this shade because it's not sold anymore. If you cut your strips in half, just make sure you remove the plastic cover on the strip first because it's hard to remove after cutting.

Not only was I using the Teal with It strips because my nails were short, but also because they have another added benefit. If I have a tear in a nail, even a really bad tear, the strips will hold the tear together until it grows out enough to be cut or filed off without pain and without looking bad. I had a very bad tear in my right index finger, well above the edge of the nail bed, and yet my nail was still perfectly attached below the tear. Weird. It didn't even hurt when I used acetone, which surprised me. The Teal with It strips held the nail together perfectly. You couldn't even tell there was a tear beneath the strips. The strips hide ridges in nails, too, which is quite impressive given that you don't use base coat underneath the polish strips.

I did get some crinkling around my cuticles and some lifting at some edges, but I used nippers to cut off any pieces that stuck out. I got some minor chips near the tips of the nails by the third day.

This "polish" had the honor of being the first polish I wore twice since becoming obsessed with polish. I last wore it nine months ago to my office holiday party, the last time my nails were this short.

As for removal, the first time I wore the strips, I removed them with regular polish remover, not 100% acetone. The "polish" came off, but I had some sticky bits to deal with. This time I removed the strips with pure acetone, and everything came off easily, leaving no residue behind, sticky or otherwise.

In the pictures below I have the Teal with It strips and two coats of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat. The pictures were taken on Day Two and Day Three and afterwards, so they show wear.

Indoors
This is a macro shot of one of the strips, a little blurry, but it's the closest I got to the true color of the polish strips, and you can see a little bit of the green teal shimmer in the turquoise polish.

Indoors
Another macro of the same nail polish strip.

Sunlight. Left Hand.
You can see a little bit of the shimmer effect.
The background color is not accurate; it's lighter and brighter in real life.
I patched up my pinkie a lot near the cuticle, and it really shows.

Indirect Sunlight. Right Hand.
You can see a little bit of the shimmer effect, especially near the cuticle on the pointer finger.
You can click to enlarge the picture to see the shimmer a little better,
but then you'll see the bubbling I caused by using Smudge Fixer

Monday, September 10, 2012

After wearing China Glaze's Stone Cold, a matte silver-infused charcoal polish, for a couple of days, I added Girly Bits Shift Happens, a multi-chromatic top coat. I figured it's not often that I wear black nail polish, and with the base already done, a manicure with Shift Happens could not be easier. I reviewed China Glaze Stone Cold here.

This top coat was very easy to apply. At just one coat, it looked like fiery red sparks. At two coats, the full multichromatic red-orange, gold, and green colors showed up. It made me really happy to look at it . . . again and again. It dried quickly, and the second coat didn't mess the first one up, even though for the first time, I didn't wait in between coats like I usually do with manicures. The polish has a good brush, thin and round. And, basically there was no cleanup needed. It wasn't shiny enough for me, though, so I added Seche Vite.

This top coat is one of many dupes for Clarins 230 a/k/a "Unicorn Pee." I don't have the Clarins, so I can't compare them, but I'm very, very happy with my "dupe." I only spend crazy amounts of money on polish when there are no dupes out there, like with OPI Black Spotted. I just paid $39 (plus $2 shipping) for that on eBay.

Here are lots and lots and lots of pictures, because I took many more than I usually do and even narrowing the choices a lot still left a lot of photos:

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Thank you so much for your patience while I was sick and then while I completed a very long continuing legal education course in my "free" time. I should be back to blogging more now, and I will start exercising and keeping a food log again on Tuesday. I explained why Tuesday on the blog's Facebook page. If anyone uses the iPhone's Lose It! app or uses Lose It! online, please send me a private message if you would be my Lose It! buddy.

At the end of September, I will have been blogging for six months. I am planning a giveaway, and I will probably have some indie minis as the prize. If I reach 50 fans on Facebook (I'm at 48), I will start the giveaway then rather than at the end of September. I was also keeping an eye on my number of published posts to start the giveaway if I reached 100 published posts before the end of September, but I'm at 80 published posts--this one will be #81--so the Facebook fans will probably reach 50 before I can reach 100 published posts. Finally, I'm watching my number of followers through GFC (Google Friend Connect), and if those were to reach 75 before the end of the month, I will start the giveaway then; I'm at 67 GFC followers. At the latest, though, the giveaway will start at the end of September, for my blogging demi-versary. Yay!

On to the polish review:

I am pretty sure that this was the first time I had ever worn black nail polish. I would not have thought I would like black polish, and I had no idea how much I would love China Glaze Stone Cold. When I first swatched it on a nail wheel after I bought it recently on clearance, I was surprised to see it dried matte! I thought I had bought the other dark Hunger Games collection polish that did not dry matte. I was very excited about having the matte polish, though. I like it so much!

It's an amazing formula, opaque in one coat! It dried quickly.

Cleanup took a while, but it was easier than cleanup of black creme polish. Using acetone for the cleanup around the edges of my nails took a bit of the black off on the edges, revealing silver underneath.

I was very worried it would not last without top coat, though. I did do a "funky French" with top coat free-handed on the tips, and I even tried to wrap my tips (maybe for the second time ever, I just can't seem to do it without ruining the manicure with clumps over the edge), but I worried the matte parts of the manicure would chip. It wasn't long before my OCD self insisted on topcoat somehow. I wore the funky French for a couple of days, though. And, for those two days, each morning I touched up the tips with a new layer of top coat.

Here are some pictures:

Sunlight.

Indoors, office lighting.

Indoors, flash.

Indoors.

Indoors, flash.

Indoors.
My poor little thumb nubbin has completely grown out now! It's been a month since I took these pictures.

About Me

I am a happily married part-time stay-at-home doggie mom and part-time litigation attorney.
This blog will be like a journal where I keep track of my manicures and nail polish purchases.
Welcome to my blog, and thank you for reading!
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